Site Leeches / Downloaders .Htaccess

So ive just been updating my useragent protection to stop site leeches from downloading content on most of our sites and figured it would be an idea to share the list i currently have so here goes...

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Backweb.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*gotit.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Bandit.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Ants.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Buddy.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*WebZIP.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Crawler.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Wget.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Grabber.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Sucker.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Downloader.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Siphon.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Collector.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Snagger.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Widow.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Snake.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Vacuum.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Pump.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Teleport.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Reaper.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Mag-Net.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Memo.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*pcBrowser.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*SuperBot.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*leech.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Stripper.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Offline.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Copier.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Mirror.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*HMView.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*HTTrack.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*JOC.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*likse.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Recorder.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*GrabNet.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Likse.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Navroad.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*attach.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Magnet.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Surfbot.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Whacker.*$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*FileHound.*$
RewriteRule /* http://www.yourdomain.com [L,R]

Does anyone else have any user agents to add to this list?

Regards,

Lee

Sorry, I'm a bit green at this kind of stuff. But my sites are getting big, so I'm interested.

What is this for? What is it preventing?

Thanks
Dzinerbear

Michael,

It stops those programs that download all of your images with the click of a button doing what they are supposed to do ;)

Basically, if a surfer wants to see the images you have on your site.. they have to go to your site to see them instead of just looking on their hard drive :)

Regards,

Lee

Yes, that list looks fairly complete, Lee.

cheers,
Luke

so this just gets added to the .htaccess and it stops them from spidering the site?

Yep thats right Bec :)

Regards,

Lee

Many of those programs either don't
have a recognizable user_agent string
or allow the user to set it the same
as their regular browser. Also, having
a very long list of rewrite conditions
like that puts some load on your server.
Also you'll never be abble to keep a
complete list up to date, so there are
better ways to approach that.

One way with less server load that will
catch more of the current and future
slurp programs is to specify what is
allowed rather than what is not.
Just allow IE, Mozilla (including Netscape),
Opera, and the SE spiders. Disallow everything else.

A much better way that doesn't rely on
them setting the user_agent to TELL you
that it's a slurper is to use the anti-slurp
features of Strongbox.